Vickerdoodle

thoughts, opinions, and random arts & crafts

Category: Health, Wellness, & Fitness

As some of you already know, I’ve been trying to change up some of my habits and create better, healthier habits. It can be difficult though, since once you get used to doing something one way, it’s incredibly hard to change that. I can’t comment on my “success” thus far, since I’ve been taking incredibly small baby steps, but I do feel as though I am moving in the right direction. So here are some cool things that I use to help me with my habit forming (or removing!)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that in order to get into a good habit, you have to start small. (Or maybe not. Perhaps you’re one of those people who can jump right into something and make it stick. If so, hats off to you.) I’ve also learned that sometimes, it is okay to ask for help or create something to force (ahem) motivate yourself. If forming habits and turning something into a regular event in your life were easy, there wouldn’t be so many people failing or giving up on their New Year resolutions every year. For me, at least, I like to have outside motivations to keep me going. I’m great at meeting outside expectations, but when I’m the one making the rules and setting the schedule, I have a hard time following through. (This is something author Gretchen Rubin calls being an “Obliger.” Her book, Better Than Before talks a lot about creating habits for different personality types. I definitely recommend a read!) To keep myself going and accountable, I’ve recently started setting goals and asking people close to me to keep me more motivated and set expectations for me.

When you look into a mirror, what do you see? Is the person looking back at you the most beautiful person in the world, or are you picking out every single one of your reflection’s imperfections? Are you happy with who you are, or are you working on getting to be what you want to be?

I went through a rough patch last September. A lot of different life factors hit all at once, and I had a really hard time handling them. So, at the time, I decided to focus on the one thing it felt like I could change and control: my health and my weight.

I’ve always felt self-conscious about my weight. I’m not overweight, but I’m not in shape either. I’d never paid attention to my diet, and I had a pretty rough time walking up a flight or two of stairs, not even gonna lie. But it was always one of those things that was “affordable,” so to speak. I wasn’t happy with my body or my weight, but I always found some way to put off getting in shape. I could afford to go another week without going to the gym, or afford to eat another slice of pizza…

I got serious about it last September, partially because I got to a point where I just had enough of the way I looked, and also partially because it was something to distract me from everything else that was happening in life. If I was focused on losing weight and eating better, I wasn’t thinking about how much all the other stuff sucked.

I was pretty successful. But I’ve learned recently that it’s one thing to lose the weight, it’s a whole other thing to maintain it.